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The comedy horror genre (IV): Long live the horror themes



After starting the discussion on the existing (always referring to Chatman's essay), we speak now of the events. I now reiterate the concept of standardization of the plot of classic genre films. The horror genre usually meet these general guidelines: a negative character (often with special paranormal) is hindered by one or more persons (the noble principles) in its criminal plans: Dracula Van Helsing and his companions fought to ensure that sucked the whole of London, Dr. Frankenstein chases end of the world her baby to avoid you sow death and destruction, and in both these examples there is a love story in the background. But while in general compliance with these rules, this particular film has a few recurring themes that are worth highlighting.
important is the concept of double, already so dear to the German cinema of the silent era (The student of Prague), and then taken from horror American. This interest was rekindled in the filmmakers (not only) at the beginning of the twentieth century studies of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who cataloged this concept in the sphere the "uncanny". The issue of splitting can be traced throughout the history of horror, from the gothic novel: if the emblematic case is represented by The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein can be found in already, in the embryo, the ' idea of \u200b\u200bsplit personality in the middle of good and bad, due to the eternal division between Good and Evil: Victor Frankenstein's creature seen in all the wickedness of his genius. The same concept of the double image is also found in all vampire movies, even if reversed: Dracula in the disturbing element is the lack of the double, the vampire does not reflect his image in the mirror, is without that double that everyone else has, so as to be different, just uncanny.
More recently, the theme of the double has been taken up repeatedly by the directors in the thriller and horror: from Hitchcock (Psycho [Psycho], 1960) De Palma (The Two Sisters [Sisters], 1973) George Romero (The Dark Half [The Dark Half], 1990).
Related to this issue in some way, and always be derived from studies conducted by Freud's psychoanalysis, is the interest that the horror genre has always shown towards hypnosis. Already in the early 20's the new art of cinema was compared to hypnosis for the type of use which underwent a passive spectator, in support of this thesis in 1921, Jean Epstein, critic and filmmaker, wrote an article. Indeed, in the late '50s, the film Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) by Arthur Crabtree uses hypnosis to influence the audience during the movie: as he explains Ruggero Eugeni, the beginning of the screening of the film , a doctor and hypnotist appeared on the screen, using the 'ipnovista "mesmerized the audience, trying to build a stronger identification with the story.
But it is a content level that the subject of hypnosis has had more on horror movies. The studies emphasize the centrality of Bellour who have had three films in this sense of Fritz Lang: Dr. Mabuse, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933) and the evil Dr. Mabuse (Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse, 1960), who expressed over a period of more than forty years, the permanent presence inside the cinema of hypnosis as a disturbing element. Over the years, many horror films have used this issue taken by the German cinema: from Dracula to The Mummy, many of the classic horror characters make use of hypnosis, the Frankenstein monster is, at least initially, be a free will that responds to the commands of those who put him under his control, just as it does to a person under hypnosis. But it can be traced back to 1919 to see introduced in the film the theme of mind control: in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Wien, Caesar committed the murders under the influence of Caligari, in which case it is a sleepwalker, but the concept does not change: the hypnotized person falls into a trance state, deep sleep, the first to obey the orders of the hypnotist, that is, the sleepwalker like hypnotized, before falling under the control of another person, must leave their state of consciousness and becoming something else (alter-ego), a double of their person will be subject to a stranger, as happens to small Regan, owned in the movie The Exorcist.
And here we are back to the concept of double that, with this particular value of the figure itself with no other independent mind, we express clearly in the figure of the surrogate (Metropolis [id.] Fritz Lang, 1926, Blade Runner [id.] Ridley Scott, 1982) in the fantasy-horror genre, or more traditional horror, the zombie (by White Zombie [id.] Victor Halperin 1932, at The Night of the Living Dead Romero and its many sequels) now become the archetypal figure of the genre. And is it not fair to say that both of these figures are an ancestor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? The creature, like a replicant, is assembled with several pieces by a scientist; and at the same time is a dead man back to life as a zombie. Both zombies surrogates also stress the importance of further recurring theme in the horror genre: Death. It seems obvious to say it, but Death is a very important element in the horror genre which can not give up: the allure of Death, as Edmund Burke said, in his treatise on the Sublime and then, in addition to being our greatest fear is also an attractive appeal to the audience of the horror film, moreover, we must recognize that the most famous stars of horror, from Dracula to Frankenstein, Freddy Krueger from the modern mummy, died back to life, and that, very often, locations of the film We are inspired by the horror of death all the time: from Poltergeist (ibid., Tobe Hooper, 1982), which incorporates the environment (already used by Kubrick in The Shining) of the Indian burial ground on which it is constructed, Pet Sematary ( Pet Semetary, Mary Lambert, 1989).
I would like to touch briefly on one last issue, following on the concept of mind control. Often in the horror genre tends to be underestimated and relegated to a subordinate role in the now institutionalized and indispensable figure of the "mad doctor", the mad scientist is an important role in manipulating these films and has an illustrious ancestor in the film Dr. Caligari but also in Rothwang Metropolis and Moreau's Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1933), and continues to be leading up to the horror of Seth Brundle in The Fly (The Fly, David Cronenberg, 1986). But this sinister character was already present in nineteenth-century novel, with a significant role at all: it is the Dr. Jekyll, who uses his scientific knowledge to liberate the most evil and brutal nature of self, but it is Victor Frankenstein, who defies the nature with the presumption of being able to defeat death, although the numerous film helped give a much more positive profile of what he wanted to give Shelley in her novel. * *
taken from Alvise Barbaro, Frankenstein: from horror to parody , Thesis, University of Milan, 2004.